My Place – Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust

Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and The Lancashire Wildlife Trust are working in partnership on a five-year eco-therapy project in Chorley for young people who live in Preston, Chorley and East Lancashire aged 13 to 25 years. The aim of the project is to support 1,000 vulnerable young people in Lancashire to participate in outdoor activities that can improve their mental health and physical wellbeing. Not only will the project enable young people to contribute towards their local environment but it will enable them to develop new skills, grow in self-confidence and connect with each other and their local communities.

Co-Production

From start: Yes

During process: Yes

In evaluation: Yes

Evaluation

Peer: Yes

Academic: No

PP Collaborative: Yes

Find out more

What We Did

Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and The Lancashire Wildlife Trust are working in partnership on a five-year eco-therapy project in Chorley for young people who live in Preston, Chorley and East Lancashire aged 13 to 25 years.

The aim of the project is to support 1,000 vulnerable young people in Lancashire to participate in outdoor activities that can improve their mental health and physical wellbeing. Not only will the project enable young people to contribute towards their local environment but it will enable them to develop new skills, grow in self-confidence and connect with each other and their local communities. Referrals are taken from the relevant Trust services as part of the young people’s journey towards recovery.

MyPlace is one of 31 projects being delivered throughout the UK as part of Our Bright Future which is funded by close to £1m of the Big Lottery Fund and co-ordinated by a consortium of eight organisations led by The Wildlife Trust.

While the project is running it will bring £120,000 of capital into the county and improve 120 green spaces.

As part of the project we have set up half-day taster sessions which will introduce people and teams to ecotherapy activities and how they can be used to help 13-25 year olds.

Although the formal partnership is between Lancashire Care and Lancashire Wildlife Trust, the MyPlace project actively links in with other organisations by using each organisation’s established networking and contact structures. For example, Lancashire Care leveraged its excellent relationship with Chorley Council to source a number of locality hubs which could be used to deliver the MyPlace project. Chorley Council is also involved in promoting MyPlace and is looking to establish a MyPlace hub and community in former club house as a community asset in Duxbury Wood Golf Course and negotiations are ongoing.

Co-Production

As this is a new service, both corporate and clinical staff are being involved in co-producing the development and utilisation of this new eco-therapy service. This also includes the development of referral pathways and the creation of locality hubs to undertake the eco-therapy.

This has involved marketing and promoting the service and establishing referral systems. • Creating a Launch Event in January 2017 to over 100 people to herald the arrival of the MyPlace project and the positive benefits to young people. • Creating MyPlace promotional material • Embarking on a series of team meeting awareness sessions to promote MyPlace and provide the teams with the promotional materials. • LCFT is normally the recipient of patient referrals, therefore it has been necessary to establish a new web-based referral link so that clinicians can send referrals to the MyPlace project teams. The web-based referral link and promotional material have been cascaded to the Lancashire Care teams via the management structure.

Looking Back/Challenges Faced

As this is a new service the biggest challenges has been in establishing locality hubs and making clinicians aware of the service so that they can make referrals. The unforeseen challenge, although all clinicians generally accepted the positive benefits of MyPlace, there has not been the volume of referrals that we expected.

Following feedback, it was accepted that it was necessary to continue to promote MyPlace and encourage a behaviour change so that clinicians more readily think of MyPlace as an alternative or a complimentary therapy.

Therefore, a MyPlace ‘Taster Day’ was piloted so that clinicians can experience the MyPlace project eco-therapy in order that they are better able to understand the eco-therapy and promote the benefits to their patients. The first ‘Taster Day session was targeted at CAMHS clinicians and the feedback from the clinicians who attended the session was particularly positive and will be used to inform future Taster Sessions. A series of Taster Days are now being rolled out to the Trust Staff to encourage referrals.

In addition, further promotional materials are being rolled out such as MyPlace posters, MyPlace desktop screensaver as well as promotional video clips.

It was also recognised that although clinicians had received the link, they had not saved the link to their web-favourites due to their busy work schedules. Therefore the referral link is being established as desktop icon, so that clinicians can more easily make referrals.

Currently patient feedback information is collated in paper form. However the web-based referral link system is being further enhanced to incorporate the patient feedback information so that it can be more readily collated and more easily used to further improve the MyPlace experience and positive therapy benefits.

Sustainability

The MyPlace project is led by an experienced therapist who provides regular supervision. The MyPlace project officers are all skilled at delivering environmental activities and, in addition, they are all mental health first aid and safeguarding trained.

Evaluation (Peer or Academic)

This is a relatively new service which was rolled out to Lancashire Care clinicians, following the launch event in January 2017. This means that patient and clinician feedback is sought and used to inform feedback to improve the service. The web-based referral system will be enhanced so that clinical measures and feedback can be thoroughly evaluated.

Outcomes

This is a relatively new service which was rolled out to Lancashire Care clinicians, following the launch event in January 2017. This means that patient and clinician feedback is sought and used to inform feedback to improve the service. The web-based referral system will be enhanced so that clinical measures and feedback can be thoroughly evaluated.

Sharing

We continue to publicise and promote the MyPlace project which has included the WWF Conservation Optimism Summit in London on 22nd April as part of Earth Day where MyPlace participated in a discussion panel that was looking at the positive health benefits associated with nature. MyPlace will also be attending a ‘poster’ session to promote the project and the Lancashire Care and Lancashire Wildlife Trust partnership at the children and young people’s conference hosted by a part of the Royal College of Psychiatrists on 15th June 2017. Arrangements have been made to present the MyPlace project at the next Our Health Our Care Conference workshop, which has been postponed following the restrictions due to the General Election and the pre-election period.

Is there any other information you would like to add?

The Lancashire Care and Lancashire Wildlife Trust Partnership is looking at ways in which Lancashire Care staff can be encouraged to undertake volunteering work for the Wildlife Trust and the suitability of Spice Time Credits http://www.justaddspice.org/our-work for staff.

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This site is supported by the Positive Practice in MH Collaborative, Breakthrough MH Ltd, the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and Otsuka Health Solutions